In general, the visually impaired refers to those who have lost their eyesight due to various eye diseases and lost light sense in which they cannot discriminate between light and shadow, but also includes a person who can barely discriminate between light and shadow and has severely weak eyesight in which only a motion of a hand before his eyes can be recognized may also be classified as visually impaired. People who have low vision, accounting for the largest percentage of the visually impaired, cannot recognize a subject such as characters, figures, or the like, with general glasses or lenses due to the weakened eye lens, iris, retina, and visual nerve system.
A magnifying apparatus is an apparatus for magnifying an image of a subject such as a book, a medicine bottle, a check, a bill (or a note), or the like, having small letters in order to help people who have low vision, or the elderly.
In particular, a portable magnifying apparatus that is small and light, can be carried around, and simply manipulated is preferred. Such a portable magnifying apparatus is divided into a support-type magnifier and a handle-type magnifier.
The support-type magnifier includes a support under a body thereof, so a user may unfold the support and lay it on the ground to use it or have the body held by hands in order to use it. In case of the handle-type magnifier, the user may unfold a handle thereof and hold it with his hands to use it.
The support-type magnifier does not have a handle, so when the user wants to use it, the user should hold the body thereof in his/her hands. Thus, it is inconvenient for a person who has a handicapped hand, for example, does not have a thumb or an index finger to hold and use the support-type magnifier. Also, when the user wants to scale down to view the target, the user should hold the body of the support-type magnifier to view the target, and when the user wants to scale up to view the target, the user should simply magnify the original image through digital zooming, and in this case, picture quality is degraded. In addition, in case of using illumination of the magnifier, if the user moves away from the subject, picture quality is damaged due to influence of the illumination.
The handle-type magnifier is convenient to hold and use with hands, but when it is intended to be laid on the ground to be used, the center of gravity of the magnifier is not uniform such that the weight distribution causes it to wobble. Also, since a battery is embedded in the body of the handle-type magnifier, the center of gravity shifts toward the body, causing the handle-type magnifier to feel heavy when the user holds it with his/her hands. Also, in case of a general handle-type magnifier, since the handle and the body are positioned in a straight line, when the user wants to use the magnifier at an angle at which his eyes are most comfortable, he should twist his wrist to use the magnifier. Thus, when the handle-type magnifier is used for a long period of time, the user's wrist is strained. Namely, the handle-type magnifier has a limitation for a person having a weak wrist such as a carpal tunnel syndrome.
Also, the general handle-type magnifier employs a fixed focus scheme, having a disadvantage in that when a subject is out of a limited range of distance, an image becomes unclear.
To solve the problem, a product employing an auto-focus scheme has been proposed. However, in this product, without a sensor for auto-focusing, images obtained through an image sensor are compared and analyzed to adjust the focus, having a disadvantage in which the focus is blurred due to handshaking when the user views a subject through the lens held in his hands. Also, in case in which letters of the subject are small, when sharpness and edge data are extracted for auto-focusing, the number of collected data is so small that the focus is blurred. In addition, since existing products are not accurate in sensing a distance for auto-focusing of a subject, a majority of products apply auto-focusing to a remote subject and fixed focusing to a nearby subject. Also, since they employ single auto-focusing (AF) scheme, namely, semi auto-focusing scheme, manual focusing should be performed in order to view a remote subject, causing user inconvenience alternating between a nearby subject and a remote subject.
Thus, in order to solve the problems, development of a handle-type magnifier which does not put strain on the wrist, has a lightweight body, and facilitates button manipulation, and further, a technique of a magnifying apparatus that does not allow illumination to affect picture quality, provide a sharp, clear image without a loss of picture quality with respect to the original image through a multi-step support when the magnifying apparatus is laid on the ground to be used, and allow focusing and illumination to be automatically adjusted is required.